"This course is a tough one!"

Said by my coach in response to my statement that I'd be happy just to have a decent bike this weekend because if it took me 4 hours to bike 24 miles, the outlook for finishing the Big Race in one day was not good.

And, at first blush it seemed not the response I was looking for.  The race was a late add when I got shut out of the (much more convenient) race that I wanted to do and I honestly never looked at the elevation profile until Liz's comment.  Coming off of Harriman it doesn't look that bad, but if Liz says its tough, I believe it.

Anyway, after a pre-dinner nap last night I started thinking about the race this weekend.  Prior to my nap (and well, after my nap too) I was over tired, not feeling great and generally cranky.  This race is sort of a huge PIA for me to get to, I have to find some of my favorite gels between now and then and I was generally stressed so I napped and then started thinking ... I'm looking forward to the swim, it won't be super cold, its in a lake (and not a crazy big midwest lake) so it shouldn't be too rough and I like to swim.  I'm looking forward to a strong swim.  The run is two loops so the second time around you know what's coming - hopefully this will help me power through and finish strong.  The only real issue for me is getting from the swim to the run ... biking with its fancy shoes, gears, breaks & balance issues STRESSES ME OUT!

I know I'll finish, I mean, I got up the big hill at Harriman and I'll get up the CT hills as well and then I'll cover the distance in the Big Race, but its the freakin bike that takes me from slightly above average to much below.  And it just seems that riding a bike should be easy. And I guess that's when I realized that riding a bike is theoretically easy, until you decide to do really hard things on the bike.  Like ride up a mountain, or ride 56 miles after swimming 1.2 miles and before running 13.1 miles.  These things are really hard.  But I do them.  Maybe not super well, but well enough to finish (err, at least so far, knock on wood) and in the grand scheme of things - if you add up the freaky fast people that are finishing before me AND the lazy couch potatoes I AM SO COMING OUT ABOVE AVERAGE and by not devoting a million hours a week to becoming freaky fast I'm doing what works for me, what I need to do to have So.Much.Fun!  

So yeah, above average and So.Much.Fun is cake and icing too.  It just took someone pointing out that its REALLY HARD for me to realize.  Stubborn, I am (and that is the second time I spoke Yoda today.  odd.).